One Week

Last Wednesday I was hit by a moped crossing the street. I felt very stupid and then the police came. I felt worse for the guy who fell off his tryke.

Then I went to HK for an offsite company conference, saw dad on Friday, Trip on Saturday and hustled back for Moustaches and Mullets that night. Massage, Xinjiang food, cowboy beard and Thumbsucker on Sunday. Indian Kitchen Monday, Dong Bei Tuesday. How did it get to be Wednesday again already?

Meat Your Future

I’ve just finished reading a particularly interesting and troubling chapter in Jared Diamond’s fascinatingly excellent Guns, Germs and Steel.

Herd animals, it seems (including steakalows, porkapods, sicklets and bark-o-loungers), are responsible for introducing a majority of all significant epidemic inducing diseases to human populations. Our centuries of herding, handling, co-habitating, and consuming animals (free-range or otherwise) has unwittingly shaped the modern world in drastic ways.

As a small for instance, the percentage of American Indians wiped out by disease rather than by warfare is approximately 95%. This is because, like many hunter-gatherer and and agrarian-only farming societies, they didn’t herd animals, and therefore were never exposed and innoculated. (Also interestingly, in many cases, European diseases arrived decades or even centuries before any (or any sizable party) of Eurasians made it there in person; the great tribes of the Mississippi are now estimated to have supported up to 20 million native Americans… virtually all of whom were extinct by the time frontier settlers reached those areas)

This is all fine and dandy in the historical abstract. Yes, it’s interesting to note the way things were and why things are the way they are today (which is: predominantly governed by Eurasian cultures who, for varying geo-environmental factors, developed food production, and therefore diseases and technologies, faster than, say, Mesoamericans or Africans)

But, what I’m thinking about now, as I stare into my soup of trans-pacific airline food, undoubtedly pumped with preservatives, growth hormones and antibiotics, is the future.

The first things that come to mind are my own eating habits over the last few years (increasingly aquatarian), and a somewhat quizzical emotional distancing from animals, which I so loved as a child. I wouldn’t claim to be so foresighted as to think anything big of these things, other than a mild-aversion to handling red-meat when cooking or prolonged interaction with New Yorkers who love their animals too much. However, I am [increasingly] aware of both the societal and personal socio-economic benefits to be gained from an entirely modern* vegetarian lifestyle**.

*Modern in the sense that currently available nutritional information / sciences allow vegetarians (with appropriate incomes and access) to consume [protein] healthy diets

**Lifestyle in the sense that, obviously, the simple act of excluding meat from your diet doesn’t necessarily ensure health. Overall dietary balance, reduction of sugar consumption, etc, is required

On an individual scale, the benefits of vegetarian lifestyle seem, with increasing scientific support, to include lessened risk of cancers and heart disease. Essentially, better overall health. And, as mentioned, with the aid of modern nutritional science vegetarians would be eating equally as well as meat eaters.

Societally, I have read convincing studies [disease aside] that indicate the process of raising animals for food is a highly inefficient use of currently available resources. (ex, rather than grow 1000 ears of corn to feed one pig to feed 5 humans, instead, use the same fields to grow 600 units of cereals (like corn, barley or wheat), and 400 units of high-protein pulses (like soy, lentils or chickpeas) in order to feed 500 or more humans.)

[Brief Aside: The answer is yes, we do have enough food to feed everyone in the world. What we don’t have is an appropriate focus on this problem, efficient distribution systems, or necessary political channels. Thus, and I’m not sure which is more grievous, Africans starve while Americans become obese, and sacks of grain intended specifically for consumption by the world’s hungry rot in warehouses thanks to dictators, ‘principles’ and/or bureaucracy.]

I won’t address the argument of taste. It’s stupidly subjective. It also begs questions such as “is the taste of steak or bacon worth the inevitable risk of future outbreaks of super-turberculosis, hyper-pox and influenza-X?”  (I somewhat assume that, to get us where we are today, such sacrifices may formerly have been necessary… but do they continue to be so?)

So, is all of this an oversimplified overreaction? Well, sure. But to get back to my questioning of the future: Then again, maybe not. Take a look at a certain country I may be am moving to for the next year. With the massive ramping up of animal husbandry in China we see not only the advent of Asian obesity, formerly unheard of [at such high rates] among regional populations, but also a scary explosion of mysterious animal-born illnesses: avian bird flu, this year’s mysterious pig virus, and SARS (likely derivative from civet consumption).

Before I read this chapter I might have been inclined to say “at least fish are still safe”, but they’re not. Not only do they actually convey disease (anisakiasis), fish farming techniques necessitate certain conditions conducive to the spread of flukes and worms. Aiya!

Anyway, here’s the thought stream that really started me on this riff:

Let’s say the U.S. adopts a largely vegetarian life-style (if California is a glimpse at the inevitably liberal future, such a reality may not be so fantastical; especially given Vegetarianism’s efficiency argument). Anyway, let’s say it happens. Meanwhile, China, on it’s separate trajectory, continues to increase it’s meat-eating and herding activities (it is, at this point, the largest absolute global consumer of virtually every foodstuff… though not per capita; Denmark, for example, consumes almost twice as much pork per-person as the average Zhongguo ren).

Much like the original Native Americans, does this put the U.S. at risk of extermination from future waves of Chinese immigrants unwittingly importing the newest and deadliest animal-derivative diseases against which our high-minded vegetarian ideals have left us vulnerable? Can our medical science outpace the global mutation and spread rates of diseases? Is this fear any kind of an argument for the continuation of eating meat?

Like a certain college roommate of mine who doesn’t vote because “mathematically, one person doesn’t make a difference” I wonder just how much it would help if I became a vegetarian. Perhaps I stand to reap personal positives in health if done properly. But, then, do I have an obligation to espouse vegetarianism and its efficiencies to the next generation [my children, say], or would it be in my nation’s best interest to cram the little monkey with bacon and ensure he continues eating meat as a defensive strategy?

I think, as I have for a number of years now, that I owe greater allegiance to the collective human population than to America alone. Hence I’m writing this post, so at least some people will be [moderately less mis-] informed.

Perhaps a simultaneous global movement is needed. Anyone up for a challenge?

I’m available to talk it out over a tofurky burger in the West Village for the next three weeks After that, it’s back to “I know, you said no meat… and that’s not meat.. it’s just pork! Silly American”

Teenage Mutant Kung Fu Mollusks

And you thought there was no way that show could ever launch a spin-off… just wait until these suckers start showing up in a river near you, establishing political parties, and then demanding martially endowed cartoon representation. And possibly the Egyptian presidency. Dedication and translation provided by Juliet Lee.

 

 

This article is dedicated to Harry’s friends, esp. to those who don’t quite understand why he decided to stay. After you read it, you will have a better picture of the hidden reasons why he is staying. It is not just because the great package his company offered, “something more inspiring than the Great Wall of China; more compelling than 5000 years of history; more handsome than the verdant rice paddies and karst tors of guilin; and tastier than Beijing duck,”  but this kind of freaky things happening almost everyday in China.

July 16, 2005. A Chinese restaurant in Lian Yun Gang, Jiangsu province, chefs are busy doing their routine work, cleaning fish in the kitchen.  When chef Xu opened the abdomen of a fish and tried to clean the internal organs, suddenly, he saw an ivory-yellow mollusk crawling slowly out of the abdomen.  Xu burst out of the room, screaming: “Holy Cow!  What the fuck? God damnit! Shoot! GEE! Wo Kao! Aiya! Zhen Jian Gui La! I have never seen this kind of creature before!”

A few minutes later, a reporter arrived and stared at this mollusk, which was attempting to get out of the abdomen. “I can see its eyes clearly, and it looks like a small turtle” the reporter said.  After getting permission from the chefs, the reporter used a toothpick to turn over the little hydra-monster and found its appearance to be even more bizarre: it has a translucent abdomen with 14 claws.  When the reporter poked the claws with his toothpick, the 14 claws immediately retracted inside of the abdomen, which froze people’s blood.  The reporter asked around the crowd if anybody has even seen this creature before, the answer is “NO”.

Original Article:

2005年7月16日中午11時許，江蘇省連雲港市區大慶東路的徐三家常菜館，廚師在灶間鍋台邊剖魚時，突然從一只巴掌大小的鯽魚腹中緩緩地爬出一只乳白色的軟體動物，嚇得徐姓廚師撒腿就跑，邊跑邊叫，“不得了，見鬼了，我從來未見到這種怪物。”幾分鐘后，記者趕到現場，只見灶間案板上的鯽魚已經剖好，軟體怪物在魚腹中不斷地向外“張望”，並試圖爬出來，記者能清晰地看到怪物的“眼睛”。

在征得飯店廚師的同意后，記者用竹簽將怪物撥出后，怪物便在案板上無方向地緩慢爬行，模樣很象一只乳白色的小烏龜。記者用竹簽將其翻過來，發現它的模樣更加怪異，在半透明的腹部，竟密集地長出了14只腳爪，用竹簽碰碰其爪子，爪子便自動縮到軟體內，讓人毛骨悚然。站在一旁的廚師直言不諱地告訴記者，長了這么大，廚師也干了許多年了，從魚腹中鑽出這么個怪物，還是頭一回看到。隨后，記者又請教了幾位上了歲數的市民，他們對這個奇怪的軟體動物都直搖頭。